White Zambia

So Zambia was originally supposed to be a white settler colony.

That didn't work out.  Zambia -- northern Rhodesia, as it was then -- was too far away from the Imperial centers of expansion, too backwards, too remote.  There just weren't enough white settlers.  By independence, in a country of around 3 million, there were maybe 75,000 whites: simply not enough to rule.  So Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) cut the north free and embarked upon its own strange 15-year experiment in minority government. 

Over the next 45 years, the white population steadily declined.  Today there are maybe 10,000 or 15,000 (it's quite hard to get good numbers). 

But they still punch above their weight. 

Zambia was a mining colony, and most of the whites were involved with the mining industry. So it didn't have as many big white-owned farms, ranches and plantations as Rhodesia / Zimbabwe to the south.  We're talking 1% of the population owning 10% or 15% of the land, as opposed to 3% of the population owning half the land.  Ironically, this meant that the big white farms that did exist, were able to survive much better.  Because they didn't utterly dominate the landscape, there wasn't an overwhelming need to break them up or give them back to black ownership.  So, while big white-owned farms have almost disappeared from Zimbabwe, there are still a bunch of them here in Zambia.  A lot -- maybe a majority; I'm not sure yet -- of the big commercial farms here are still in the hands of White Zambians.  They're second, third, fourth generation, the children and grandchildren of the farmers who hung on after independence nearly 50 years ago. 

-- One oddity: while there's plenty of lore and literature about the white settlers in Rhodesia and Kenya, white Zambia seems to have kept a very, very low profile.  Okay, there aren't a lot of them, and Zambia's fairly obscure.  But it's an English-speaking country.  And it's not like there are a lot of African countries where the descendants of white settlers are still playing an important role in the economy.  (South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, umm, maybe Namibia?)  So you'd think they'd be discussed more.  Nope.  They seem to keep to themselves, and as far as I can tell nobody has written any best-selling novels about them.

Banks and bankers tomorrow.

 

 

Comments

[Peter]

On a somewhat related note, Georgia is trying to encourage the immigration of white South African farmers by offering them farmland at very low prices. Georgia's agricultural sector, especially the wine industry, has been struggling, and the hope is that the South Africans can turn things around with their proven expertise.

[Doug (not Muir)]

I saw an article about it in the Independent, which left me a bit skeptical. It's odd, but not impossible.

F'rinstance, there's a reasonably sized exchange program that brings people interested in tourism from Indian universities to the university here in Batumi. Not quite 100 students at a time, I think, but not too far from that either. So in about a dozen years there will probably be a tidy little Indian community in Batumi.

Will there also be Boers in Kakheti? It might be worth sticking around a few more years to see how these things play out. Maybe it's real-time examples of how odd groups wind up in all the nooks and crannies of the Caucasus.

[Debbie Brown]

"Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight" is a very popular memoir by a white woman who grew up in Zambia during colonialism. It's a very interesting book.